


A hard day

by Augurey



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Background Het, Canon Compliant, Canon Related, Canon Relationships, Drama, Enemies, Gen, Gen Work, In Character, One Shot, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26142682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Augurey/pseuds/Augurey
Summary: The war is not easy for any member of the Order of the Phoenix. Ignoring each other, two spies try to forget their troubles in the Leaky Cauldron. But what if they notice each other? A meeting on the threshold not only between inside and outside. Severus & Remus (not as pairing. Pure Gen).
Relationships: Remus Lupin & Severus Snape





	A hard day

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Ein harter Tag - StoryHub Fanfiction](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17412548) by [Augurey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Augurey/pseuds/Augurey). 



_Hard had been the day  
_

Blue haze filled the lounge, hiding the tired faces of the guests behind smoky veils. The air was soaked with the smell of tobacco. Many a one puffed his pipe while his friends turned to playing cards. Trays full of jugs and one or two bowls of steaming soup swayed back and forth between the tables. But whether it was a social banquet, or a pleasurable spooning of the meal, the blue haze woven everything in like the distant webs of a dream. All the merriment was separated by an invisible wall.

Remus sadly lowered his veiled gaze; looked down in the darkness of his niche at his half-empty butterbeer glass and felt the pressure weighing more heavily on him with each passing second. The hands of his watch had not yet reached the nine and the twelve. It was not yet time to step through the door of the Dripping Cauldron and apparate to Grimmauldplatz. But to him it seemed as if time was slowly descending on him like a sword of Damocles. As if the hour was already lurking in a dark corner. Again it had been a wasted day, at the end of which he would appear at the meeting empty-handed, with nothing but bad news to tell. Again he had found closed ears and the ranks of Voldemort's followers had grown. Not that he had not made every effort. He had tried his best to convince his peers of his cause. Again and again he had told of his life story and Dumbledore's grace and goodness like a prophet before the unbelievers. But they did not listen to him. The well-meaning people had patted him on the back and dismissed his story as an individual's maudlin fate, but in view of the overall situation it was hardly significant. Others had branded him a liar who had been bribed by Dumbledore to tell them beautiful fairy tales. If the greatest white magician of their time really had an interest in them, why had he declined the offer to become Minister of Magic after the last war? Why had he not used his power to turn the tide of their fate? Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, they explained, was a fine speaker, with many melodious ideas that were nothing but lip service. As long as their name was on display for all to see in a registry at the ministry; as long as even a drop of Wolfsbane Potion cost horrendous sums of money instead of being spent by St. Mungo for a tiny symbolic fee, they would not believe any chatterer who belonged to the 'good, decent' part of the magical society. The warning that Voldemort was only using them all, that in his delusion of pure blood, then, when he no longer needed their powers to rise in his power, he would light a fire of devastation among them even worse than the misery in which they already lived, this warning they threw to the wind.What did they care about gloomy days in the sometime, when their stomach growled with hunger in the here and now? What did they care about being exploited when they had no roof over their heads and could only curl up under tattered blankets in winter? Voldemort gave them wages and work, warmth and bread. Future and freedom, what a small price they were. Some of the older ones even remembered his father, remembered what the name Lupin once stood for, scolded Remus a dirty traitor and chased him to hell.

But that was not the point. It wasn't only that which turned Remus' chest into a lump of lead; what made him think sadly about whether it wouldn't be better to just lie down in his old bed and sleep through the day; to sleep until a better time came. It was the memory of the glimmer of hope in his melancholy, of the splash of color in the dark gray of his life. Of the happy, carefree laughter that made his heart sound, and the bright, vibrant pink that inflamed his insides - and yet both of them at the same time tied up his throat with bitterness and filled every breath with wormwood. The thought of facing her and seeing the melancholy in her eyes, of seeing what he had done, what he had done to her, made him tremble. Had she never returned his feelings, it would have been only his pain, his misery. Once again he would have loved in vain from afar and his heart would have borne another scar from it, as it had a thousand times before. But to see HER eyes swimming in tears, to see HER shining hair fading to grey was an unbearable matter. How much he wished, how much he longed, to be able to simply hold her in his arms and be happy with her. Her love was a strange gift from heaven, full of wellbeing and woe. For it could not be. Her feelings and her suffering were a strong seduction to do the wrong thing. And the wrong thing was him. He was not good for her. Too old and struck by the curse of the full moon. A monster who slept in his depths. He would break her, pull her into the abyss that he himself had known all his life and there she would die miserably. So he had to break her heart to protect her from himself, even though his own heart broke into a thousand splinters in the process. There was no other way...

Sadly, Remus slowly raised his glass.Opposite him, in the distance, somewhere in front of the other wall, sat an equally lonely figure in front of an oil spill and a bottle of Firewhisky, his face hidden too deep in the shadows to recognize it. Remus sighed softly. At least he was not alone in his mood. Meaningly, he led the last sips to his lips. Her eyes had been in tears, this morning just before departure, when he told her that nothing would come of them. 

_The day had been hard..._

_... hard had been the day_

The black eyes on the other side of the parlor stared into the world like empty tunnels. Laughter, roaring, smacking, cursing, all sounds flew past the ears, leaving at best an insulting discord. In the distance, at a lonely table, a bent figure sipping a Butterbeer like a mirror image, its face in the dark undetectable. Severus gave it a short, astonished look while he put down his glass. Then he averted his gaze. What did he care about the suffering of other people? He had enough of his own to drown in alcohol! In his throat the whiskey burned like a welcome fire of purification, like the stake of his life. 

Albus would be very curious today and would want to know more about what he had to tell. At least one of them. Severus was not. His ears were booming from what he had heard in the secret quarters of the Death Eaters and his head was drumming from the efforts of his Occlumency, which had left him exhausted and tired.But Dumbledore, the fine head of the Order of the Phoenix, didn't have to wade through all the dirt of his past. He did not have to endure the burning of the Dark Mark on his arm every day, this stain of his past that he would like to tear out. He did not know what this tightrope walk meant, this lonely wavering path between the worlds. He had no idea what it meant to never know which side one belonged on, to never really be able to reach the good, but not really belong to the evil either, not for a long time already, and yet to always surround oneself with it.

  
The Dark Lord had ordered Draco Malfoy to kill his principal, which was basically just a punishment for his parents, because nobody believed that a sixteen year old would be capable of it. But this was not what had driven Severus into the Leaky Cauldron again before the gathering.As so often in his plans, Voldemort had made a grand speech to his followers and had once again addressed the failure of his Death Eaters, and especially Lucius' in the Department of Mysteries. Again and again and again and again he had praised Severus as a counterexample of another time when his followers were 'still to be relied upon'. Severus Snape does not disappoint me ... it is thanks to him that I am aware of the threat Harry Potter poses, even if I have only succeeded in eliminating his good-for-nothing parents. Every word was a slap in the face, burning like acid on my skin.

The prophecy, the prophecy, the cursed prophecy! Fierce, desperate tears wanted to get into Severus' eyes.But he choked them down with a sip of Firewhisky. What was he entitled to tears for?! He was a monster! He had pulled HER into the abyss of his darkness, had sacrificed HER for his sins. HER blood was on his hands.Ignorant, he had placed the noose around her neck; had smothered her angelic laughter; had trampled the living fire of her red hair into musty cold ashes and had extinguished forever the glow of her green eyes - that only light of hope in the dark, icy days of his childhood into Spinner's End. What kind of devil was he, what kind of man was he?! He would have to atone for this murder until the end of his time.

HER blood was on his hands.Ignorant, he had placed the noose around her neck; had smothered her angelic laughter; had trampled the living fire of her red hair into musty cold ashes and had extinguished forever the glow of her green eyes - that only light of hope in the dark, icy days of his childhood into Spinner's End. What kind of devil was he, what kind of man was he?! He would have to atone for this murder until the end of his time.

Thoughtfully, Severus put down the glass, fleetingly looking for the reflection on the other side of the room.This morning, when he had looked at himself just as fleetingly in the other mirror, the shattered one in his dungeon apartment at Hogwarts, he had just awoken from a nightmare of Godric's Hollow. Not even a meager breakfast he had been able to eat, when the snake skull was already calling him to do evil.

_The day had been hard_

Suddenly the bell struck nine. From Tom's Fwooper clock above the bar, a bird shot up from a cauldron and flew cheerfully over the heads of the guests. The two men put the money on the table, jumped up and hurried towards the exit, when they suddenly recognized each other in surprise.Remus tore open his eyelids in astonishment, opened his lips for a word of welcome. Severus darkened his eyes, turned away snorting contemptuously and disapparated on the threshold. For a moment Remus stood on his heel in the sultriness of the summer night and looked into the night in confusion. Inaudibly quiet, the mild wind whispered the thought that blew through both heads: What was it that the other had been trying to forget here?


End file.
